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Gay in the AfD: Talking with LGBT supporters of Germany's populist party

How do LGBT interests mesh with those of a party that opposes gay marriage and adoption for gay couples? DW spoke with two openly gay politicians about why they joined the AfD, and why one ultimately decided to leave.

"Gays and lesbians are just as important to Germany as any other loving person with a connection to family, home and nation," states the preamble to the guiding principles of the "Alternative Homosexuals."

But why are people in the LGBT community drawn to the AfD? Particularly when the party directly opposes gay marriage, heavily advocates for the "classical family model," and opposes expanding laws to allow same-sex couples to adopt children?

For Alexander Tassis, the AfD's stances on education certainly aren't wrong, in fact, he also wants to stop what he calls "early sexualization" and "gender madness." He also denies that the party is moving towards the right.

"It's becoming more and more the party that I wanted," Tassis told DW.

'We're not seeking equality'

Tassis, the 46-year-old son of a Greek migrant worker, currently heads the "Alternative Homosexuals." He's a member of the state parliament in Bremen and has been a card-carrying AfD member since 2013.

When asked about the AfD's views on gay marriage, he mentions that legal unions, or "registered life partnerships" as they are termed in Germany, give gay couples around 90 percent of the same benefits as heterosexual marriage.

AfD politician Alexander Tassis heads the "Alternative Homosexuals"

But even if the benefits are nearly on par, 90 percent still means partnerships aren't equal.

"We're not seeking equality," he said. "It doesn't have to be the same."

He also agrees with the AfD's emphasis on "classical families." However, he and other members of the "Alternative Homosexuals" differ from the AfD's stance on adoption. Currently, same-sex partners in Germany cannot adopt children as a couple. The group believes that families should provide children with "modern values," including "reliability and responsibility for each other and for society."

"Homosexual partnerships completely share these values," it states in the "Alternative Homosexuals" guiding principles.

Tassis also pointed out that one of the most prominent members of the AfD, Alice Weidel, is a lesbian who lives with her partner and their child. He said that gay and lesbian party members were "fully integrated" in the AfD and were welcomed by the party's leadership.

Leaving the AfD

Mirko Welsch, former spokesman of the "Homosexuals in the AfD," has a different impression of the party's attitude towards the LGBT community.

"The AfD has developed in such a way that we now see a sort of incitement against different groups of minorities," Welsch told DW. He added that the AfD sometimes argued that homosexuals "are a threat to the family - which is completely incorrect."

Welsch is an openly gay man who was elected to the district council in Saarbrücken-Dudweiler in the small, western state of Saarland in 2014. Like Tassis, he came to the party in its early days, concerned about immigration and the eurocrisis.

Last week, Welsch formally left the AfD, saying he "could no longer take" the divisive comments of Thuringia state party leader Björn Höcke and didn't agree with the shift in the Saarland branch of the party.

With the state's elections coming up on March 26, he said he could no longer cast his vote for the AfD.

Both Welsch and Tassis noted that these were also primary concerns for why they support (or supported) the AfD.

In the guiding principles of the "Alternative Homosexuals," the group views the movement against "Islamic orthodoxy" as necessary for "survival."

"A stop on immigration for people who are not familiar with [German] culture also increases the acceptance of social subgroups," the document reads.

Wilders had long positioned his anti-Muslim platform as a way to protect LGBT rights. The tactic was utilized by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, as well as by France's Marine Le Pen, to justify their opposition to Muslim immigrants.

But that hasn't been the case in Germany. Quite the opposite - many of the party's prominent politicians, like Höcke, post homophobic images on Facebook. The party's co-leader, Frauke Petry, has even said she worries about the normalization of gay couples in German media.

"There are dumb comments in every party," Tassis said in the party's defense.

Tassis said he was working to get the same kind of direct support that Wilders gave to the LGBT community and to address the homophobic statements of his fellow party members - but said it would take time.

Welsch, for his part, thinks that if the AfD openly supports gay rights, then it will only be a pretext "and not from the bottom of their hearts."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Alexander Gauland

Co-chairman Alexander Gauland said the German national soccer team's defender Jerome Boateng might be appreciated for his performance on the pitch - but people would not want "someone like Boateng as a neighbor." He also argued Germany should close its borders and said of an image showing a drowned refugee child: "We can't be blackmailed by children's eyes."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Alice Weidel

Alice Weidel generally plays the role of "voice of reason" for the far-right populists, but she, too, is hardly immune to verbal miscues. Welt newspaper, for instance, published a 2013 memo allegedly from Weidel in which she called German politicians "pigs" and "puppets of the victorious powers in World War II. Weidel initially claimed the mail was fake, but now admits its authenticity.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Frauke Petry

German border police should shoot at refugees entering the country illegally, the former co-chair of the AfD told a regional newspaper in 2016. Officers must "use firearms if necessary" to "prevent illegal border crossings." Communist East German leader Erich Honecker was the last German politician who condoned shooting at the border.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Björn Höcke

The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia made headlines for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. The comments came just as Germany enters an important election year - leading AfD members moved to expel Höcke for his remarks.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Beatrix von Storch

Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts - but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Marcus Pretzell

Pretzell, former chairman of the AfD in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and husband to Frauke Petry, wrote "These are Merkel's dead," shortly after news broke of the deadly attack on the Berlin Christmas market in December 2016.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Andre Wendt

The member of parliament in Germany's eastern state of Saxony made waves in early 2016 with an inquiry into how far the state covers the cost of sterilizing unaccompanied refugee minors. Thousands of unaccompanied minors have sought asylum in Germany, according to the Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees (BumF) - the vast majority of them young men.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Andre Poggenburg

Poggenburg, head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" - the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Alexander Gauland - again ...

During a campaign speech in Eichsfeld in August 2017, AfD election co-candidate Alexander Gauland said that Social Democrat parliamentarian Aydan Özoguz should be "disposed of" back to Anatolia. The German term, "entsorgen," raised obvious parallels to the imprisonment and killings of Jews and prisoners of war under the Nazis.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

... and again

Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. Acknowledging Germany's responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era, he went on to say Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."